The Brightest Sunset (The Darkest Sunrise #2)

“So, when do we get to see him?” Brady asked, ignoring my impending meltdown.

“Well,” Tom started. “He’s down the hall. So I guess that’s up to you. I passed off all the paperwork to Brady’s attorney, who’s running them out to Judge Gratham’s house now. Assuming he’s got everything he needs, he said he’d sign off on a temporary custody order until a formal hearing can be set. Social Services is going to want to have a word with you two before you can take him home, but you can meet him any time you’d like.”

“Temporary custody?” Brady snarled.

“It’s a formality,” Tom assured.

In a quiet voice, I found the courage to ask, “What about Porter?”

Tom’s face got hard. “What about him?”

“Yeah,” Brady snapped. Taking a giant step in my direction, he parroted Tom but with a lot more attitude. “What about him?”

I licked my dry lips and flashed my gaze between the two men. “I mean…what’s going on with him? How is he involved?”

“He kidnapped our son!”

Tom lifted his hand to silence Brady. His face remained hard, but his voice gentled. “Our guys are still working with him, trying to figure out his role in all of this.” He pointedly cut his gaze to Brady for a second before sweeping it back to mine. “It doesn’t appear that he was part of the actual abduction. Lucas was already four when he met Catherine Reese. We believe her child died, though we don’t have a cause of death yet. It appears to be of natural causes. Maybe SIDS or some underlying medical condition. Who knows? She was probably distraught, saw Lucas at the park, and took him to replace her son. Just slipped him right into Travis’s life.”

I lifted a shaky hand to cover my mouth and breathed, “So, Porter didn’t know?”

“You have got to be fucking kidding me here,” Brady seethed.

Tom turned a scowl to Brady, who was all but vibrating beside me. However, with my old friend hope infusing my system, I didn’t give a damn.

“Answer me,” I demanded.

“We don’t know,” Tom replied. “I refuse to believe he didn’t figure it out before he started pursuing you. The fact that he was dating the biological mother of the child his wife kidnapped doesn’t sit well with anyone here. Way too much coincidence there for it not to be suspicious. But we’re going to get to the bottom of it. Trust me on this, babe. You do not have to worry about Porter Reese anymore.”

Oh, but for the way my heart felt like it had been put through a strainer, I did.

Brady fisted a hand on his hip, his other pinching the bridge of his nose, and spat, “I can’t believe you were dating that piece of shit.”

My throat got thick and a cold chill sent a shiver down my spine, but I gathered enough attitude to choke out, “I don’t particularly care what you believe and don’t believe, Brady.”

My hands were shaking, so Tom caught the back of my neck and pulled me into his chest, his words aimed at Brady. “Think of it this way. It all worked out. We found him, okay? Let’s worry about Lucas now.”

Nodding, I sucked in a deep breath, hoping that it would somehow ease the turmoil and panic inside me.

It didn’t.

But I could pretend better than anyone on the planet.

And, as the hours wore on, I had to do just that.





* * *





I sat on the wrong side of the two-way mirror in the police station, my arms folded on a small table, my face buried between them.

My chest empty.

My mind jumbled.

My stomach in knots.

My entire fucking life unrecognizable.

I’d only thought the day Catherine had driven off that bridge was the ultimate betrayal.

Boy, had I been wrong about that.

“Answer the question, Porter.”

“No!” I snarled, lifting my head to stare into the eyes of the third cop who had come in to ask me the same fucking question over the last two hours. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

“So, Catherine—”

“No!” I snapped, shoving off the table and rising from my chair.

My nerves were shot.

The fingerprints were a match. DNA was still being processed, but I’d given up holding out any hope that that wasn’t going to match too.

Travis was Charlotte’s son.

And nobody in the entire fucking Atlanta police department would believe that I didn’t have something to do with it.

“Catherine didn’t tell me shit. Okay? I didn’t even know her when Lucas was kidnapped. Travis was four years old when we started dating, four and a half when we got married, five when I adopted him, and eight when she killed herself. And, during those years, never, not once, did she ever mention that she stole a baby off a fucking playground.”

He stared up at me, his face unreadable, and slowly flipped a file folder open. “Okay. Now that you mention it, let’s talk about the day your wife died.”

My chin jerked to the side as though he’d struck me. “What?”

He kicked my chair, shoving it toward me, and tipped his chin for me to sit down. “It says here that you were on the scene the day of the accident. You were the first person in the water and the last one out. You managed to get both of your kids out, but somehow, your wife was still inside that car when her body was recovered?” He rocked back, folded his hands in front of him, and watched me expectantly.

Ice chilled my veins. “Yeah. That’s what fucking happened,” I bit out. Leaning forward ominously, I stabbed my finger at the file he was reading from. “Does it also say how I nearly drown in that car, trying to save her? How she fought me with her dying breath? What about that it was no accident at all? She purposely drove off that bridge. So let’s get one thing straight. My wife didn’t die—she killed herself.”

His face remained impassive. “The two of you have an argument that day? Things get a little heated? She had some bruising on her body when it came in.”

I barked a humorless laugh. “Are you shitting me here?”

“Not at all, Mr. Reese,” he drawled in a thick Southern accent.

“She drove off a fucking bridge!” I exploded, my voice echoing off the walls. “With my children in the car. We were all bruised and battered that day. That was not limited to Catherine. Travis was—”

“Lucas,” he corrected.

I glared at him with wide and wild eyes, daring him to correct me again.

He lifted his hands in feigned surrender, a cocky smile playing at his lips. “Just wanted to make sure we were on the same page.” He tipped his chin to the chair again. “Sit down, Porter.”

My jaw ticked as I held his gaze. “I did everything I could that day. And I will not stand here and listen to you insinuate otherwise. My wife kidnapped a kid, a fucking baby, and you’re going to sit here and pretend that she wasn’t crazy enough to kill herself. Pull your head out of your ass, put down the torches, and look at the facts. I was not part of any of this. My only crime here is falling in love with a little boy who belonged to someone else.”

“Sit down, Porter.”